What Is Prompt Chaining?

A single prompt can do a lot, but it has limits. Complex tasks that require multiple specialized sub-tasks, very long context, or iterative refinement often exceed what one prompt can do reliably.

Signs you have hit the single-prompt ceiling:

• The model skips steps in a multi-step task
• Quality drops for the later parts of a long task
• The output is too long to fit in one context window
• Different parts of the task require different expertise or tones

Prompt chaining is sequential execution where each prompt's output becomes the input for the next prompt. Instead of one large prompt trying to do everything, you break the task into specialized steps.

Step 1 → output → Step 2 → output → Step 3 → final result

Each step can be optimized independently, use different models, or apply different constraints.